Who killed JFK?

For more than 40 years the truth behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has proved elusive. Was the killing really carried out by Lee Harvey Oswald, a 'lone Communist nut', as the Warren Commission concluded, or was it the work of a more sophisticated conspiracy? And if the latter, who was responsible?

Most previous books have plumped for the conspiracy theory, blaming everyone from Cuban hitmen, rogue CIA agents, the Mafia and even members of the American military-industrial complex. This account is no different, yet it still manages to convince because, for the first time, it provides a credible reason for the government's unwillingness to delve too deeply into the events surrounding JFK's death. That reason, detailed for the first time in this book using recently declassified files and dozens of interviews, was a top-secret Kennedy-sponsored 'Plan for a Coup in Cuba' - codename 'Amworld' - that was scheduled for December 1, 1963, just nine days after the assassination.

Since the beginning of his presidency in 1960, Kennedy's chief foreign policy aim had been the overthrow of Fidel Castro's Communist regime in Cuba, just 80 miles from the American mainland. The many CIA-led plots included failed assassination attempts by Mafia operatives and the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles in 1961. Yet it is commonly assumed that these plots stopped after Kennedy's successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when he promised the Russians not to invade Cuba if they removed their missiles. And so he did, but with the proviso that the removals had to be verified by UN inspectors (shades of Iraq). This Castro would not allow, leaving Kennedy free to continue his plotting.

The so-called 'Amworld' plan was different from any previously disclosed operation because it involved a 'palace coup' (the assassination of Castro and his brother Raul) by a senior member of the Cuban government - almost certainly Che Guevara - who would then form a provisional government with leading Cuban exiles and, if necessary, invite US forces to help him restore order. Unfortunately for Kennedy, the plan was discovered by three Mafia godfathers - Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante and Johnny Roselli - who all had links with the intelligence agencies because of their involvement in ongoing CIA plots to assassinate Castro.

In a neat irony, the Dons were able to use their knowledge of 'Amworld' to arrange JFK's own assassination in a way that would prevent a truly thorough government investigation, in order to protect the coup plan, its participants, and national security. 'They were confident,' write the authors, 'that any such exposure' of the plan 'could push America to the brink of war with Cuba and the Soviet Union.' In the process of being vigorously pursued by Kennedy's brother Robert, the attorney general, they had decided that the 'only way to avoid prison or deportation was to kill JFK'.

The final piece of the jigsaw was a Communist patsy who would take the blame: Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet, as it turns out, Oswald was almost certainly an anti-Communist CIA asset who, far from plotting to kill Kennedy, was actually part of the 'Amworld' anti-Castro operation. The Mafia Dons knew this, and they also knew that it could never be admitted for fear of exposing 'Amworld' and risking a nuclear confrontation with the Russians. Oswald had to be silenced after his arrest, just the same, and the deed was done by a Mafia associate called Jack Ruby.

So who actually killed JFK? Waldon and Hartmann cannot be certain, though they suspect a team of four assassins: two in the Texas Book Depository (where Oswald worked and the sniper's nest was discovered) and two on the Grassy Knoll. The fatal headshot, they conclude, was almost certainly fired from the latter location, possibly by a French drug-trafficker and assassin known as Michel Victor Mertz.

The Ultimate Sacrifice of the book's title was, of course, Kennedy's. He knew of the threats against his life - because of similar recent plots in Chicago and Tampa (detailed here for the first time) - and yet chose to continue with the Dallas motorcade regardless. This new account of his demise may be long, dense and repetitive, yet there is no doubting the compelling logic of its conclusions - the fruit of 17 years' research. Suffice to say that, on top of all the revelations about the Kennedy assassination, it also contains credible and interrelated explanations for both Marilyn Monroe's death in 1962 and the Watergate break-in of 1973. A truly remarkable book.